Gun lobby best hope is to wait

Fred LeBrun, Commentary

Published 7:39 pm, Saturday, March 2, 2013

I've taken to wearing my camo hunting jacket around town in places where it is not always appropriate as a show of support for the great rebellion.

Luckily it's waterproof. The jacket, that is. But so is the rebellion. The several thousand who rallied Thursday at the Capitol against the governor's hastily passed NY SAFE Act, the most restrictive and least sensible gun control legislation in the country, stood in ankle-deep mud and persisted through a drizzly day to vent a collective frustration that is pervasive upstate. Mostly a crowd of ripely mature, white males, expressing disgust and anger.

I'd fit in perfectly, more on the disgusted than angry end of the spectrum, but a fellow traveler for sure.

My hunch is the rebellion is just picking up steam and over time will become less purely symbolic, as was the case Thursday, and more focused with a fury on the politicians who made this happen.

Governor Cuomo predictably continues to insist, "I'm proud of what we did." He can hardly be expected to say, "Hey, I was a moron. Let's do it over and do it right this time, and actually first engage the gun community in what they think before passing laws that only affect them." His reaction to the rally was that the overwhelming majority of New Yorkers support these new gun laws and that only a strident small minority do not. The polls show that, he said.

As I have mentioned before, it's funny about those polls. To my knowledge, the polls he is referring to — two from Siena and one from Quinnipiac — were taken in what could be charitably called the heat of ignorance over these multifaceted gun restrictions. I would posit that most New Yorkers responding had little to no knowledge of the specifics of Cuomo's laws and were responding emotionally to the Newtown tragedy instead. None of us knew what was in those laws until after they were passed. They were out there without context when those polls were taken.

What we need is a new set of polls that assess how much the public really knows about the issue and how it feels about these laws six weeks later. And how it feels about our beloved governor. I'll bet there's been a bit of a shift.

I'm convinced that people most of the time are largely uninformed about the issues for which they are being polled. The more emotional the issue, the less reliable the results. I'll bet respondents pick up a clue here and a word or slogan there that lead to something of an opinion. Perfect for the kind of manipulation the governor has used to bolster his dictatorial governing style and to justify the way the NY SAFE Act was passed specifically.

But over time, the public hears more about an issue from friends, family, the media, the water cooler — wherever. I would love to get a sense, for example, of what those in Manhattan, the ones who showed 80 percent in favor of stricter gun controls initially, actually knew about the laws we already had on the books. And how they feel about the new ones, having seen the reactions of upstate New Yorkers. We learn from each other. In addition, I would strongly suspect upstaters have turned even more against Cuomo's gun laws after hearing from their neighbors.

As has become strikingly obvious, there is a great difference between how those in the big city see guns and gun control, compared to those of us up here in the country. How much better off we would all be if the governor had taken the time to parse out his gun control package to reflect these two quite different worlds.

I think he would have been surprised at how much of his NY SAFE Act most legal gun owners upstate would have accepted, with a little schmoozing and respectful engagement. Instead, he dissed us all, the moderate and immoderate, the rational, middle of the road, and the wacko alike.

Now, we're all fellow travelers in his eyes.

The governor is missing a fundamental truth, one that President Obama saw from the beginning of his push for national gun control legislation: The limits of gun control cannot exceed what the majority of those directly affected can accept.

Engagement on the issue is critical to shift that majority view. Otherwise, the imposition of overly restrictive laws on those whose personal initiative is necessary for compliance is a shaky proposition at best. But that is what the governor has done instead of engaging.

Civil disobedience is likely to follow, which, contrary to the governor's claims about this law, will not save lives but instead put more of them at risk, particularly law enforcement.

So, what happens now? Well, more counties will pass resolutions against NY SAFE. There will be more rallies, more polarization, more disgust and anger. It will likely become more and more of a political football, with partisan forces falling along predictable lines. Realistically, legislative relief is not forthcoming. Legislators are scared to death of the governor. Maybe the courts will throw chunks of it out as a result of a blizzard of lawsuits, and maybe not.

Our best hope is to simply wait out this governor until he moves on to his just reward, then rewrite the law. In the meantime, I wish the rebellion would hand out little camo ribbons to wear. Because I suspect it's going to be a long haul and I need my trench coat back.